My daughter Mallory loves Greek mythology. I once bet her that she did not know the twelve tasks of Hercules off the top of her head. I lost.
One of her favorite parts of The Iliad is when Odysseus navigates a narrow passage with a lethal rock on one side and a fatal whirlpool on the other. Steering between Scylla and Charybdis has been part of our vocabulary ever since.
In pastoral ministry I have my own Scylla and Charybdis to navigate, but their names are “Abound” and “Abide.” Neither appears lethal. In fact, both are life-giving parts of my calling. But trying to experience both feels like a Homeric task.
Seize the day, and cease your workI want to abound, to devote myself to God’s work: “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast and immovable; always abounding fully in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58).
I want to discover the deepest passions that God hard-wired into me. I want to develop whatever gifts I have to their fullest.
I want some fire in my belly. I want to experience such a level of motivation that sometimes when I think about the work of the Lord it keeps me awake at night.
I want to abound.
When Paul said: “I am being poured out like a drink offering,” That’s not a picture of casual, comfortable labor offered when my personal world makes it easy. Abounding is what Jesus asked us to do. Taking up a cross is not an easy thing. He is Lord of the cross.
But on the other side of my life is Jesus’ statement in John 15:4: “Abide in me, and I will abide in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must abide. Neither can you bear fruit by yourself. You must abide.”
Abide, Jesus says. This, too, is an important New Testament word: to remain, to dwell. In our day we would talk about this as having deep roots, or being centered.
I feel the power of this call as well, the call to be a man of deep prayer, to refuse to hydroplane over my emotional life but rather to experience joy and sorrow deeply. To live the way Jesus would live if he were in my place.
“Come to me, all you who labor, and are heavy laden,” he says, “And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).
Gentle. That’s how Jesus describes himself. The Lord of the cross is also the Lord of the easy yoke, the light burden.
A holy tension
Do you feel the tension between abounding and abiding? I live with it every day. It’s unending. Will it ever go away?
Jesus lived with it throughout his ministry. In Mark 1 Jesus withdrew into the desert to abide with his Father, then plunged into the city to abound in his work, then withdrew while it was still dark to abide, only to be accosted by Peter who’s upset that Jesus didn’t leave a pager number (“everyone is searching for you”). Jesus doesn’t say: “Don’t bother me—I’m abiding.” He goes off to abound some more.
Some people resolve this tension by just abiding, not seriously troubled by a lack of effectiveness. Garrison Keillor wrote about a patronizing do-gooder who lived by the “If I can just help one fainting soul for a moment my work was not in vain” philosophy—a strategy, he noted, that makes it rather difficult to fail.
It is possible for a church to go 20, 30 years or more without producing fruit. People are not challenged, volunteers not trained, resources not well-stewarded—and no one complains. People just get used to not abounding.
I don’t want to live like that.
On the other hand, some people run around in frenzied activity. They live in a chronic state of exhaustion and burnout. They may pile up impressive accomplishments, but their spiritual life is dry. They use people; they live with preoccupied souls. There is no depth, no mystery.
I don’t want to live like that, either. I expect to wrestle with this tension till I die.
God didn’t get his work done all at once. Why not? It wouldn’t have been hard for him.
What will make this work?
If I’m going to both abide and abound, I need to practice certain principles.
1. Focus on what matters most. Each morning I make a W.A.M.M. (What Activities Matter Most?) list. I need crystal clarity on what’s important and what’s peripheral.
Peter Drucker writes that recognizing what counts as a true contribution is the great challenge for people in work like ours. If I don’t do this, it’s embarrassing to me how much time I can waste.
Sloth, Frederich Buechner said, isn’t necessarily incompatible with heavy activity. It’s failing to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Like the kamikaze pilot who flew 17 missions.
2. I need to be fully present. Jean Pierre de Caussade described the “Sacrament of the Present Moment.” It means being fully present to God’s call right now.
It means devoting myself fully to the task—writing or counseling or leading or speaking—with my whole being. It means when I come home I must learn the difficult art of leaving work behind, being fully present with my family.
Our family is in the stage where Nancy and I spend a fair amount of time as chauffeurs (roughly 100 hours a week). I used to complain about this. Then a friend told me how this could be great family time—the kids can’t get away! If I’m fully present, these are wonderful opportunities for conversation.
I have learned that certain forces keep me from experiencing “the sacrament”: ingratitude, irritability, tension, a chronic sense that there’s never enough time.
It’s not just that we wrestle with these forces; it’s that we glorify them. Busyness, fatigue, over-scheduling become signs of being important. Dorothy Bass noted that the fourth commandment is the only one that people, even people in ministry, commonly boast about breaking.
3. I need rhythm. One striking aspect of the Creation narrative is that God didn’t get all his work done at once. Why not? It wouldn’t have been hard for him.
God was establishing a pattern, a rhythm, for people made in his image.
God worked. And when he was done, God rested. He called it a day. He celebrated what he had done. He never burned out. He never said, “Thank me it’s Friday.”
I need to make sure I have a rhythm that includes solitude. I remember when I first decided to try it. I waited for a free day to come along. Guess how long I waited? You have to schedule solitude, write it in the calendar, and protect it fiercely. Sometimes mine are brief periods of solitude: an hour at a nearby forest preserve. Sometimes they’re longer—a half-day or a day. But my days for solitude never volunteer. They have to be drafted.
4. I need a plan for my leisure. Some time ago I noticed a pattern: my days off would come up, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with them. I have friends who sometimes have whole vacations available but don’t give any thought to what will be life-giving and joy-producing. No wonder we wrestle with fatigue!
So I ask myself these days, “What activities will I both genuinely enjoy and will also give me a chance to be with my family?” Recently my 11-year-old son and I took up snowboarding. One of us is much better at it than the other (the other one is bruised enough from it that he is writing this article standing up), but it’s been great to find an activity that allows us to bond over something we both enjoy.
5. I need to focus on abounding where God has gifted and placed me.Parker Palmer writes about being offered the presidency of a large educational institution. Because it was a step up the ladder for a teacher and writer, he was ready to say yes. As a Quaker he first called some friends for a “clearness committee” to help him discern if it was God’s call.
Their first questions were easy to answer. Then someone asked: “What would you enjoy most about being president?”
“Well, I wouldn’t like to quit teaching,” Palmer said. “I wouldn’t like the politics involved … I wouldn’t like fund-raising.”
“But what would you like?”
After a long pause, he said quietly, “I would like to have my picture in the paper with the word ‘president’ under it.”
Parker, couldn’t you find an easier way to get your picture in the paper?
To abide and abound I have to be very clear about the gifts and passions God has given me. And so often ego gets in the way.
It’s one thing to embrace my gifts. It’s another to embrace my limitations. But to take an unblinking look at my limitations is one of the greatest tests of character I know.
My guess is that all of us have at least one limitation that is especially painful to acknowledge. I know I do.
And every time I try to pursue a task as if I didn’t have this limitation, I cease to abide and abound. Palmer notes that burnout isn’t usually the result of trying to give too much. It’s the result of trying to give what isn’t really in me.
Performance review by God
At our church we’ve recently instituted a performance review process to help each other be as effective as possible. It can be a pretty sobering. But I remember that a performance review is coming one day that will make all my reviews on this side of life look pretty casual.
Here’s what I’d love to hear God say when that day comes: “You abounded in my work. You took real risks, you dreamed honorable dreams, you rolled up your sleeves and sacrificed comfort and poured yourself out like a drink offering.
“And … you abided in my love. You sought to be transformed by my Spirit, to live in intimacy with me and authentic community with the people I love.
“You abounded and you abided.”
Who doesn’t want that?
John Ortberg is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church 67 East Algonquin Rd South Barrington, IL 60010
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